CONNECT TO YOUR TV WIRELESSLY
Cast calls from an Android phone or tablet
If you make video calls on a laptop or Android device, you can wirelessly stream them to your TV using Google’s Chromecast - a process known as ‘casting’. Some recent smart TVS, such as Sony’s Android-powered Bravia models, have built-in Chromecast support, otherwise you’ll need to buy a Chromecast dongle (£30 from www.snipca.com/34693), which plugs into an HDMI port on your TV.
Neither Skype nor Zoom support casting directly (unlike other apps, such as Netflix and Youtube), but you can still get your video calls on to a TV set by casting your entire screen. Once you’ve set up your Chromecast dongle (see www.snipca.com/34694), open your video-chat app on your device, then swipe down from the top of the screen to open the Quick Settings menu.
On some devices, you may need to tap the down arrow to reveal the full selection of options, including the Cast icon (rectangle with curved lines in the bottom-left corner). Tap this, then select your Chromecast device or TV in the ‘Cast screen to device’ box that appears. This will stream whatever’s on your Android device’s screen to your TV.
If you don’t see a Cast option in the Quick Settings menu, you may still be able to cast your screen using the Google Home app ( www.snipca.com/34695). Launch the app, tap your Chromecast device, select ‘Cast my screen’ (see screenshot left), then ‘Cast screen’.
There can be limitations to this method. As others have reported online, we weren’t able to switch Skype to landscape mode on our TV and were stuck with black bars either side of a thin, portrait-shaped video feed. Additionally, while we could see our video callers on our TV screen using Zoom and Skype, neither sent audio via our TV’S speakers, meaning we had to listen through our phone’s speakers.
One way around this is to connect your phone or tablet to a set of external speakers using a 3.5mm audio cable, but if you’re going to start using cables you might prefer to use a single cable connection for both audio and video (as we’ll explain).
Cast calls from your laptop
You can also use Chromecast to cast video calls from your desktop PC or laptop. The latter is the more practical option because you’ll need to place your machine next to your TV set so you can use its webcam during the call.
Open a Chrome browser on your computer, click the menu button (three dots) and select Cast (there’s a similar Cast option in the Edge browser, but it doesn’t work with a Chromecast dongle). In the Chrome menu that opens, click the